The Feeling Good Handbook

With his phenomenally successful Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, Dr. David Burns introduced a groundbreaking, drug-free treatment for depression. Now in this long-awaited sequel, he reveals powerful new techniques and provides step-by-step exercises that help you cope with the full range of everyday problems.

With an up-to-date section on everything you need to know about commonly prescribed psychiatric drugs and anxiety disorders such as agoraphobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder, this remarkable guide can show you how to feel good about yourself and the people you care about. You will discover that life can be an exhilarating experience.

Great intro to cbt

(Copied over from old review system)

Posted by dontcare

Social Anxiety Background
Severe social anxiety.

Other Treatments
Zoloft, Celexa, various therapists, Dr. Richards CDs

Treatment Experience
I found this book to be a great introduction to cognitive behavioral therapy. Dr. Burns does a great job explaining what CBT is, the premise behind CBT, and the most common thought distortions. He provides several good techniques for overcoming these thoughts, and proceeds to explain how the techniques are used for a variety of emotional disorders. This makes the book repetitive, and so you may not want to read the whole thing through, but it also makes the book useful for a wider range of readers.

Dr. Burns includes the Daily Mood Log in this book; I have not yet tried it, but the premise makes a lot of sense.

A large part of this book is devoted toward psychiatric medications. I personally found the section a total waste of time; that information can be found online, in a more readable form. Still, this is a worthwhile read, even if you only concentrate on the first few chapters.

I read this book after my cbt group concluded because it was a recommended additional resource in the back of the cbt book by Sam Obitz that we used in my group. I found it to be full of detailed and useful information. I liked how Burns was able to impart so much info without making it feel clinical like a lot of cbt books i have read. I would highly recommend it!

I read this book and tried two of the exercises and it didn't seem to help much. I don't know if I did the exercises wrong or what but they didn't seem to help so I stopped doing them. I only did them once though. One exercise was to help me stop procrastinating and it didn't seem to help. The other one was in the section on depression, the "Daily Mood Log" or something like that. You are suppose to instantly feel a little better and see the irrationality in your thinking but I didn't at all so I didn't try anymore.

What I did like from the book though was the two self-assessment tests for anxiety and depression. You take a quick test and it tells you how depressed and anxious you are, and you can track it on a weekly basis. I do this every week just to see where I am at, and sadly I don't change much every week.

I also recommend it. I've found I have to remember to keep doing it even when I've started to feel better - like antibiotics, I guess - because sometimes the relief is so immediate that I forget to keep looking at it. Then, two weeks later, something comes up and I'm not the Cognitive Distortion Ninja that I probably could be with practice.

Just reading the first few chapters puts me in a better mood, I think because his statistics of the HARD results that come just from READING, which is real easy, really give me hope. And hope makes it so much easier to face my fears head on, no matter how much work I have to do.

I read this book and tried two of the exercises and it didn't seem to help much. I don't know if I did the exercises wrong or what but they didn't seem to help so I stopped doing them. I only did them once though. One exercise was to help me stop procrastinating and it didn't seem to help. The other one was in the section on depression, the "Daily Mood Log" or something like that. You are suppose to instantly feel a little better and see the irrationality in your thinking but I didn't at all so I didn't try anymore.

What I did like from the book though was the two self-assessment tests for anxiety and depression. You take a quick test and it tells you how depressed and anxious you are, and you can track it on a weekly basis. I do this every week just to see where I am at, and sadly I don't change much every week.

Ide22,
The only thing I didn't like about the book was that if it was the first cbt book I read I can see how all the exercises could be daunting and overwhelm you.
You may want to try a more basic introuctory cbt book like the one we used in my group called Been there, done that? Do This! by Sam Obitz. Use the TEA form thought countering exercise in it everyday and in a matter of a month or two I think you will see a big difference.

Question about the CBT books...

I have the Feeling Good book, The Feeling Good Handbook, and the Shyness and Social Anxiety Workbook. I did really good with the small yellow Feeling Good book, so I moved onto the larger Feeling Good Handbook. Halfway through the larger version, I stopped going to therapy because the book seemed to be what helped me, not the therapist. I felt so much better and was actually feeling partially cured. I stopped reading the books and now, I'm back where I began, if not worse. Now what? I guess I'm supposed to read the books again. How long will I have to continue rereading them? Do I just have to keep re-reading them until I have it all memorized and it comes as second nature to use the exercises in the books? Will I have to keep reading these books for the rest of my life? I want to be normal again.

This is a great book. His other book, "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" is also great.

The biggest idea I took away from both these books was the fact that people's moods and feelings are caused by their habitual thoughts. How you interpret your daily experience plays a big part in whether you are insecure and anxious or secure and feeling good.

Basically the ideas in these books allow you to start realizing that YOU are the one in control of your feelings. You aren't the victim of outside events because you always have the freedom to interpret those events however you want.

And the big challenge to get over is the habit of always choosing the most negative interpretation. Anxiety distorts your ability to see events objectively and accurately for what they are.

This is a great book. His other book, "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" is also great.

The biggest idea I took away from both these books was the fact that people's moods and feelings are caused by their habitual thoughts. How you interpret your daily experience plays a big part in whether you are insecure and anxious or secure and feeling good.

Basically the ideas in these books allow you to start realizing that YOU are the one in control of your feelings. You aren't the victim of outside events because you always have the freedom to interpret those events however you want.

And the big challenge to get over is the habit of always choosing the most negative interpretation. Anxiety distorts your ability to see events objectively and accurately for what they are.

The biggest idea I took away from both these books was the fact that people's moods and feelings are caused by their habitual thoughts. How you interpret your daily experience plays a big part in whether you are insecure and anxious or secure and feeling good.

Basically the ideas in these books allow you to start realizing that YOU are the one in control of your feelings. You aren't the victim of outside events because you always have the freedom to interpret those events however you want.

And the big challenge to get over is the habit of always choosing the most negative interpretation. Anxiety distorts your ability to see events objectively and accurately for what they are.

Exactly.

"Give me strength to be kind, to combine all the good things in life that are so hard to find."

I also found this book to be excellent and even though I didn't formally do the exercises, I put into practice the principles and they worked very well for me on a recent visit to an optician where I had to sit down and wait in public while my wife was being seen to.

Have the book for a couple of years but never read the whole thing and picked it up again along with other books recently in order to study it more systematically.